No card required
Your family’s phone. On your Mothership.
Spin up a private calling hub at home — softphones, cool old analog handsets, grandma’s cordless — without buying into someone else’s gadget or monthly carrier plan. Thirty days free, then $20/year for the whole mesh.
Why spin up a Mothership
One hub for the household. You approve who can call. Calls stay on your network — not a kid-phone cloud you can’t audit.
- Own the stack. HAOS add-on, Docker, or a spare PC. Family data lives on your box.
- Pick any handset. Softphone for free, or plug a Western Electric, Princess phone, novelty kids set, or thrift-store cordless into a ~$40 Grandstream HT801. No proprietary plastic phone required.
- One license covers the mesh. Kids, co-parents, grandparents — not a new subscription per wrist or per Can.
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Friends can host too. Start your own Mothership for $15 year one
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OWNMS5). To keep Circles calling cousins who stayed behind, both hub operators must complete a peer invite — restore alone is not enough.
Honest year-one cost
Analog kid path: ~$40 ATA + ~$10–$40 thrift / flea-market phone + $20 license ≈ $70–$100 once, then ~$20/yr software.
Tin Can today: about $135/device plus Party Line at $9.99/mo (~$100–$120/yr) if kids call regular numbers — and you’re locked to their handset.
Full side-by-side with Tin Can, Gabb, TickTalk, and Gizmo: Compare PhoneHome.
FAQ
How does the free trial work?
Download and install the Mothership (HAOS or Docker). The 30-day clock starts on first boot, not download day. No card required. Then subscribe for $20/year to keep easy updates and an unlocked hub.
Do I need special kid phones?
No. Use the free softphone, or plug nearly any analog RJ11 phone into an HT801. Cool old handsets and thrift finds are encouraged — you are not locked into one brand’s plastic.
Where is family call data stored?
On your Mothership. PhoneHome sells a signed host license and shared push plumbing — it does not host your family database.